Billy - Softcover

Stephenson, Pamela

3.96

4,600 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590208498 ISBN 13: 9781590208496

Publisher: Abrams Press, 2012

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Billy, the revelatory, poignant, and wildly entertaining biography is written by the woman who knows him best―his wife. With insight and objectivity, Pamela Stephenson, a clinical psychologist, takes us through the heartbreaking and hilarious life of a comic legend and what made him the man he is today. The descriptions of Scottish life evoke the poignancy of the Ireland in Angela's Ashes as she tells of the troubled, abused. and desperately poor child in the docklands of Glasgow who grew up to shock and awe audiences around the world with his notoriously bawdy humor and a remarkable range of performances as a brilliant comic, a serious actor who played opposite Dame Judi Dench in Mrs. Brown , and the star of the U.S. television show Head of the Class.

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Review:

Billy Connolly is loud, hilarious and contradictory. His biography, written by his wife, former comedian and practising psychotherapist Pamela Stephenson, is pretty much the same. Over the years Connolly has grown from Glasgow shipyard welder to folk-singing beardy hard man (yes there is such a thing) to darling of the good and great (or at least famous) around the world. That he is so many things to so many people while in no way compromising his core self can only be good. It would be no mean feat for Stephenson, then, to pen a history to that would satisfy Connolly audiences of fans and contemporaries from all periods of his life's journey. In most places, but in truth, not all, the author manages to do this well.

The first half of the biography is somewhat anthropological in tone. Not surprisingly, a post-war Glasgow upbringing is somewhat alien to the antipodean author and Stephenson errs towards Angela's Ashes intonation as she describes her husband's tenement childhood (Scots readers may also find her regular translation of seemingly self-explanatory Scots phrases--which Connolly would use--obtuse). In contrast her examination of her experience of living with the comedian and his life from that point on is much better. Anecdotes which Connolly uses in his live shows pepper the text and laughs are raised as he tells of the time he was mistaken as a drug dealer on Speyside, of his cheeky friendships with cinema's elite and even through the more difficult times; the difficulty of balancing an almost manic humour with a troubled life. Pages turn quickly as we grow to understand more of what makes the man tick.

Certainly fans of Billy Connolly will enjoy this book. It is not perfect but it is certainly entertaining and should fill a gap in the market until Billy--with his half-remembered stories and off-centre view of the world--decides to let us into his head as well as his history. There's surely one ideal way to do this and that's by writing his story himself. --Helen Lamont

About the Author:

Pamela Stephenson was born in New Zealand and, like her husband Billy Connolly, was originally a comedian. She appeared in a variety of movies and television shows, including Saturday Night Live. Pamela and Billy currently live and work in Los Angeles, where she is a clinical psychologist.

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